


Crushed to Ashes

by Maidenjedi



Series: Ashes [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 10:59:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/pseuds/Maidenjedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder, as his office is destroyed and his work set aflame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crushed to Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> A Mulder-POV companion to "Leaves Her Fingerprints," but all you really need to know is that this is post-"The End" and it's Mulder, coping. Written for XF_is_Love 2013.

_"I was under the impression," he said, head down as he carefully lifted the right slide from the viewer, "that you were sent to spy on me."_

_He turned around and saw her in the flesh for the first time, the young woman some government shadow men thought could be his undoing._

_She stood in the doorway. Her smile was sardonic. Her eyes focused on him but for a fleeting second while she scanned her surroundings. He felt his pride pricked in that second, and he felt defensive, territorial._

_That afternoon, he wrote up a requisition for another desk._

_And promptly filed it away._

-

Ash was caked over the remains of the desk, where piles of un-filed case notes had been stacked that morning. Lights flashed in the window, which was broken to allow for the hose, and pieces of glass glittered on the floor. A steady drip issued from the ceiling. A rank smell, of burnt plastic and smoldering paper, flooded the air and his senses.

His eyes widened as he looked around. _Gone. All of it. Gone._

He heard voices from behind him, taunting, mocking, the usual Bureau bullshit relegating him and his work ( _and Scully,_ whispered his guilty conscience) to rank bullpen gossip. Whether anyone had really come down to witness his personal tragedy in triumph was irrelevant - Mulder could hear them.

Scully came to him, held his arms, laid her head on his chest. And he ached to return the gesture, to envelope her here and block out the lights, protect her because she was now, truly, the only thing he had left. But his arms would not move. 

He stared at the wall behind the desk. The corkboard remained, and there was his poster, that cheap headshop collectable that had started out as a joke and became a mantra, hanging just barely. "I want to believe," it said.

Believe in what, exactly?

-

They questioned him.

He knew he should have expected they would, when Skinner called and told Scully what had happened. Arson was the likeliest scenario, because how would a basement office erupt in flames like that? A locked basement office at that, one which Mulder had been told in no uncertain terms to leave and possibly never return to?

He had motive, but unlike so many times in his career, he also had an alibi. The investigator looked at him and Scully askance (for Scully would not leave, she stood holding Mulder's hand and he could not have let go anyway). _Sleeping together?_ said that judgmental, quirked eyebrow. 

-

Skinner looked at their joined hands and shrugged, almost imperceptibly, as though he would chastise them any other time but knew better just now. "Mulder, Scully, you'll need to be back here tomorrow morning. Your hearing has been scheduled for eleven."

"Yes, sir. We'll be here," said Scully, her voice husky from exhaustion. 

Mulder nodded, or thought he did. He could barely hear their exchange, as the sound of that relentless drip reached him even up here, far from the basement.

Reporters began to gather just outside the doors. Scully set her jaw and squeezed Mulder's hand as they turned to leave, but he let go.

He let go.

-

Diana wasn't going to die. He knew that much. 

Scully had called to get the latest, and gently told him. "She's stabilized. It took some effort, and her blood pressure is still lower than they'd really like. But she can live through this, Mulder."

_But will she recover_ , he thought. All the times he'd asked her to sacrifice her work, her passions, always demanding that whatever she believed take a backseat to his own wild ideas and theories and work. Diana had now taken a bullet for him.

Scully made a small noise, a sigh perhaps, and she walked into the kitchen for water. She came back and handed him a glass, and he held it without drinking. She sighed again and walked to the window, setting her glass down on the desk and picking up the masking tape he kept there. She toyed with the torn edge. Light shone in from the street, casting her in a halo, and Mulder watched her, realizing.

Diana had sacrificed a lot for the work. For him. And she'd left. She'd requested an assignment in Europe just to get away, after only a year. The X-files had never even been her assignment, they'd been his, and she tagged along. 

Five years in, here stood Dana Scully. After everything. Melissa. Duane Barry. Cancer. Countless encounters with creepy, slimy, murderous things. She stood now looking out the window and Mulder saw her jaw quiver, just slightly, and he thought back on the very few times she'd let him see that happen. All of them horrible, all of them taking a piece of her.

And yet, here she stood. Whole enough that she was propping him up, holding his hand and taking him in her arms.

He needed to hold her.

She sat next to him, carefully not touching him. He could feel her holding back. And he wanted to correct it, to close the distance.

He was so tired, though. Diana, the office, everything. He was so tired.

-

When he woke, he was under the Navajo blanket, and Scully had left his coffee machine running. She hadn't been gone long, he figured, but she had definitely left. 

Sunlight poured in and illuminated the dust and dishevelment of his tiny apartment. He realized he smelled of smoke and wet paper, and got up to shower, and move along with his day.

But not before drinking the coffee Scully had left him.

-

"Read it," she whispered, pressing paper into his hand as she walked by him for her portion of their hearing. She was likely going in there to be told once and for all that their partnership was over. Or maybe to request it, for all he knew.

He sat down as the door closed behind her, and opened the paper.

Billy Miles. Theresa Nemman. 

Oregon.

He thought of Scully as she was then, mousy-haired and so, so innocent. She'd come running to him the moment something was wrong. He hadn't counted on that, on her being vulnerable and real. He'd expected aloof, if not rude, and he'd expected she'd glean secrets and share none. 

How had this survived the fire? It had to have been buried in those drawers, he thought. And he wondered if anything else had surfaced - had Scully found the long-ago requisition? 

If they ever came back here - if they ever shared an office again - he would make sure she had a desk.

-


End file.
